Engineering Simulation Solutions for the Sport Industry

Ball sports are diverse and cover various disciplines, such as racket sports (tennis, squash, badminton and table tennis), team sports (soccer, football, basketball, handball and hockey), and water sports (water polo), as well as golf, polo, cricket and countless others. By extension, some sports using projectiles of different shapes facing similar challenges such as badminton or ice hockey could be associated as well. All these sports require great accuracy, as the target (the hole, the basket, the goal or other location the ball needs to reach) is very small compared to the typical dimension of the playing field.

The likelihood that a ball will precisely reach its target is determined by two events with quite different time scales: impact and fly. The location of the initial impact onto the ball together with its associated energy are the degrees of freedom of the athlete to create the object trajectory; this could be strongly influenced, however, by several side impacts and rebounds during the ball’s journey. The material and the structure of the projectile, such as its relative elasticity, play a major role as well.  The fly is greatly influenced by the aerodynamic interaction of the ball with its surrounding media. The shape and profile of the ball together with the initial spin given by the player and the atmospheric conditions will largely contribute to the actual landing location of the projectile.

Engineering simulation solutions from ANSYS can be used to better understand the complex interactions that happen in various situations, such as those that occur in:

ANSYS offers innovative solutions that help to better investigate and understand these complex dynamic interactions. The unequalled depth of engineering technology from ANSYS provides the ability to model the impact with great accuracy using integrated explicit modeling. The momentary interactions between the projectile and other objects such as the player, racket, golf club, surrounding walls or water surface can be analyzed while taking into account the structural specificities of each element. During the fly, the complex turbulent air flow pattern surrounding the moving object influences the trajectory in a subtle way by imposing slightly asymmetric forces to the ball. The effect depends, for example, on the non-sphericity of the object or the cavity profiles of a golf ball specially designed for their interaction with the air.

The required accuracy of a shot cannot be achieved without a close integration of complex phenomena within a single model. Thus, an unparalleled breadth of solutions from ANSYS spans multiple physics: Impact modeling, fluid flow, structural analysis, multiphase considerations and fluid structure interaction are complemented by a comprehensive multiphysics approach. In addition to the specific analyses targeting the ball, numerous studies of the associated equipment (golf club, protection equipment, etc.) or the environment (design and ventilation of the stadium or sports arena) can be analyzed in the open architecture of ANSYS solutions.

Engineering simulation solutions from ANSYS offer ball sports a laboratory for reproducing both critical events that happen in a fraction of a second and very complex transient and turbulent flow patterns that influence trajectories. Accurately reproducing such phenomena makes it possible to visualize a sequence of events at every time step and to see the subtle interaction with, and resulting influence of, the environment. This wealth of information, extremely difficult and expensive to obtain by physical testing, provides the necessary knowledge for an in-depth understanding of complex trajectories, which makes it easier, faster and more cost effective to take action or provide valuable recommendations that can improve the design of the object or that impact movement.

Pathlines illustrate the complex flow inside and outside of a WIFFLE ball in flight.
Courtesy of Dartmouth College, Hanover, NH

Airflow vectors and surface pressure predictions on a golf ball

The flow around a spinning rugby ball is shown through contours of vorticity magnitude on the downwind side